Twenty-eight was neither young nor old. Obviously it was young in the scope of someone’s whole life, but it was already getting late in terms of figuring out what you wanted to do. Bobby’s parents got married when they were twenty-three and twenty-five, which seemed normal only in the context of time, as though they were cave people who didn’t expect to live to thirty. But that’s when his friends had started getting married, too.
Selling real estate was supposed to be steady, but it wasn’t. There were reality television shows about guys his age selling ten-million-dollar houses in Malibu, but Bobby was struggling to rent fifteen-hundred-dollar apartments. He and Carmen lived like roommates or, worse yet, family members. He cooked and she cleaned. Carmen reminded him to pick up his dry cleaning and kissed him on the cheek when she felt like it. She had never wanted kids—never. If he was being honest, that was the problem. Not her age, not anything else. Carmen may have wanted to get married, but she never wanted to have children, and he did. It was how he knew it didn’t matter that he didn’t love her.
Bobby let himself slow down. The muscles in his back were already tired. It was so hard to know when you’d made a mistake. What was it? Staying with Carmen for so long? Cheating on her? Telling himself that it was justifiable, because he knew they weren’t going to last, so what did it matter, anyway? Bobby opened his mouth and let it fill with water, and then pulled his face out of the pool and spat the water out. Maybe the problem was Miami. Maybe the problem was the gym, or the debt, or the loneliness. Maybe the problem was him. It all seemed so easy for everyone else, choosing the right person to marry, as if they had some secret sign, a tattoo in invisible ink. How else were you supposed to know? Bobby was looking for certainty. He’d tried to ask some of his friends, in an offhanded way, how they knew their girlfriends were “the one,” but the question always sounded hypothetical and got him answers like “I know, right?”
From the middle of the pool, all Bobby could see were the sky and the trees ringing the property. An airplane flew overhead, and Bobby wished he were on it, going somewhere he wanted to go. Instead, he put his face back in the water and kept swimming, back and forth, back and forth, until he was so tired he thought he might have to crawl to the house on his knees. It was time for him to straighten out, and if nothing else, he could start with this, the length of this pool, over and over again.
Jim and Franny took their time packing their things and bringing their suitcases downstairs to Charles and Lawrence’s room. Charles hadn’t stripped the bed when they left, being in such a hurry, and so Jim and Franny were changing the sheets, even though it seemed silly, just for one night. Franny was buzzing with irritation. It was Gemma who’d made the error, not them.
“If it was me, I would sleep in the guest room for a night,” Franny said, for at least the tenth time. “I would.”
“I know, Fran.” Jim pulled the sheet over the upper left-hand corner of the mattress, and waited for Franny to do the opposite one.
“I might even go stay somewhere else or, at the very least, offer!” Franny threw her hands up. “It’s so rude.”
“It’s so rude.” Jim pointed, gently, at the tangled sheet. Franny nodded and pulled it taut on her side, stretching the elastic over the thin bed. “But it is her house.”
“The other beds really aren’t as nice as hers, huh?” Franny quickly tucked in the last corner, and they moved together toward the pile of pillows, throwing them back on the bed. “What a cow.”
“What a cow,” Jim repeated, and softly pushed Franny onto the bed.
“What,” she said, not unkindly, as he moved on top of her, his knees on either side of her waist. Jim lowered himself as gracefully as he could and kissed her on the forehead. His eye socket was still green, but she was getting used to it.
“I was just remembering how it felt to bring Bobby home,” Jim said. “How terrifying it was—driving those fifteen blocks from Roosevelt felt like driving to Timbuktu. The world was so loud. All those honking taxis. Do you remember?”
“You drove so slowly,” Franny said. “I loved it. I wish you’d always driven that way, like the car was made out of glass.”
“I don’t think Charles and Lawrence have any idea what they’re getting themselves into,” Jim said. “But neither did we.” He rolled onto his side, tucking his long legs against Franny’s body.
“They’ll be good,” she said.
“We were good, too, weren’t we?”
Franny could remember those first few days as a complete haze, as if shot in soft focus. Her nipples had hurt more than she’d thought they would, but really, what had she thought at all? It was almost impossible to imagine an actual baby existing where there wasn’t one before, even when you could feel it kicking away inside you. It was easier with Sylvia, of course. Poor Sylvia. The second child never did get the same kind of attention. They’d leave her wailing in her crib, they’d set her down on the kitchen floor with nothing more than a wooden spoon to entertain her. Every time Bobby screeched, they ran. Maybe that was the answer to good parenting—pretending the first child was the second. Maybe that was where they’d gone wrong, by always giving in.
She rolled onto her side, too, her nose level with Jim’s. A swath of her dark hair fell out from behind her ear, covering her eyes. “Should we worry about him?”
Jim reached out and brushed Franny’s hair out of her face. “Yes. What choice do we have?”
“I love you as much as I hate Gemma,” Franny said. “Which, right now, is a lot.”
“I’ll take it,” Jim said. “And you know, I kind of like being down here. It’s more private. Doesn’t it feel like we’re in a hotel? Or, at the very least, a bed-and-breakfast?”
“Oh, God, bed-and-breakfasts,” Franny said. “Where you’re forced to eat subpar blueberry muffins with strangers.”
“Yes, and have sex with your wife.” Jim put a hand on Franny’s lower back and pulled her toward him, pressing her against his body hard enough that she would be able to feel his erection.
“Is the door locked?”
“I locked it as soon as we got in here,” Jim said. “I was a Boy Scout, remember?”
“Ooh,” Franny said. “Tell me again about those tiny little shorts.”
Jim let the joke go, wanting to move on, wanting to take her clothes off while she’d still let him. That was part of the appeal of Madison Vance, not knowing when and if she would stop him. He thought he knew Franny well enough to know that she was ready, but it had been a long time, and it seemed possible that the signals had changed. He kissed her neck the way she liked, up next to where her jaw met her earlobe, and then climbed backward to pull her dress off over her head.
Franny pushed herself up on her elbows, creasing her stomach at the waist. Jim quickly undressed next to the bed, his hard-on springing upward joyously when he pulled down his boxer shorts. Franny’s body knew just what to do, her hands and her mouth and her legs, and she was ready to do it all.
“Take them off,” she said to Jim, and he obediently pulled down her underwear, one side at a time, inch by inch, until they were wrapped only around her left ankle. “Now come here,” she said, and he moved back on top of her, filling her mouth with his. They didn’t speak again until it was over and they were lying on their backs, glistening with a job well done.